Weekly Web Harvest (weekly)

“The agency tapped Parabon NanoLabs to do DNA testing on bits of trash found on the street, such as coffee cups and cigarette butts. The company then used Snapshot DNA phenotyping to produce a sketch of each litterer’s face based on the DNA sample found on the trash.”

Not in agreement with the ‘taskmaster’ element but I have similar concerns about teaching evaluations.

“Michele Pellizzari, an economics professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, has a more serious claim: that course evaluations may in fact measure, and thus motivate, the opposite of good teaching.”

“Show me your stuff,” Stark says. “Syllabi, handouts, exams, video recordings of class, samples of students’ work. Let me know how your students do when they graduate. That seems like a much more holistic appraisal than simply asking students what they think.”

“At Zynga, this specific Tragedy of the Commons[1] came to be known as the Las Vegas Strip Effect?—?so called because of the ever increasing prominence of competing calls to action, similar to how the Strip slowly evolved to become the glittering monstrosity in the desert that it is today. Of course, anyone looking at the Las Vegas strip today has no trouble imagining how this situation could have arisen, but that is the nature of a slippery slope! That first PM with a bigger and brighter sign probably didn’t foresee the fire breathing volcanoes, live-action pirate shows, and replica wonders of the world dominating the skyline.”

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